Flight delay and cancellation compensation, Tui/Thomson ONLY

Goagoer

Thomson did not comply with a court order so I requested judgement. The court then sent this
"Unless by 4pm 23rd June 2014 the Defendant complies with the Order dated 11 April 2014 the Defence is struck out and judgement entered for the Claimants for damages to be assessed"
I rang the court on 25th June and was told Thomson had not replied and I should request judgement - again! I did this immediately by email the same day and yesterday received a letter from the court stating
"upon the court having been informed that the Defendant is seeking permission to appeal the decision of the Court of Appeal in Dawson-v-Thomson Airways [2014] EWCA Civ 845 to the Supreme Court, the claim is stayed until further notice"
Thomson fail to comply with 3 court orders and are told their defence will be struck out and judgement entered and yet are still granted a stay on the grounds that they are seeking permission to appeal?! Beggars belief! Any thoughts?

David_e

Goagoer wrote: »

Any thoughts?

My thoughts are that it is ridiculous that time limits are extended for the airline where there isn't - indeed cannot be - a reasonable excuse. I assume there is nothing you can do but someone may advise otherwise.

bigmama1

Goagoer wrote: »

Thomson did not comply with a court order so I requested judgement. The court then sent this
"Unless by 4pm 23rd June 2014 the Defendant complies with the Order dated 11 April 2014 the Defence is struck out and judgement entered for the Claimants for damages to be assessed"
I rang the court on 25th June and was told Thomson had not replied and I should request judgement - again! I did this immediately by email the same day and yesterday received a letter from the court stating
"upon the court having been informed that the Defendant is seeking permission to appeal the decision of the Court of Appeal in Dawson-v-Thomson Airways [2014] EWCA Civ 845 to the Supreme Court, the claim is stayed until further notice"
Thomson fail to comply with 3 court orders and are told their defence will be struck out and judgement entered and yet are still granted a stay on the grounds that they are seeking permission to appeal?! Beggars belief! Any thoughts?

I don't understand how this can be allowed to happen. This is yet another ploy by the dispicable Thomsons. The judgment can go against them and then say they intend to seek PERMISSION to appeal against a decision already given in the court of appeal! Let's hope the judges read about Thomson's behaviour and DONT give permission? I wouldn't!

I'm afraid this is going to be attempted by the dispicables for some time. In my case Thomson sent in their disclosure to me and the court, that "IF they were not successful in their defence, they intend to request a stay to request permission to appeal to the court of appeal" This was even before they got to court! So they obviously were not very confident then?

I think they will most probably send these letters out to everyone who has a claim now?

I will only say to everybody, keep calm and fight back by staying with your claim. At the end of the day the interest of 8% is racking up!

Prof_Ligate

Moneyedout wrote: »

I had a First Choice Flight booking back to the UK in September 2007
We however flew out and back on a Thomson Flight.
I also had trouble finding the flight details on flight stats and discovered that my flight home was a different number to that on my booking form and the one we flew on was actually scheduled for the later take off time. Further investigation revealed that my original flight time and number had been scheduled up until June 2007 when it suddenly disappeared.from their flight timetable. We were never advised of this change.
Therefore Thomson new in advance that we would have to wait for the flight we eventually flew home on. Myself and none of the passengers that I spoke with were aware that we were going on a different flight as we all assumed that our original flight was just delayed as we were lead to believe by Thomson staff at the airport.
.

This scenario happened to us on a flight in 2008. Holiday booked with First Choice, we turned up to check in along with loads of other groups of passengers and were told it wasn't flying until 4 hours later. Obviously the passengers (none of whom had been told of the change) were not happy. The crew told us the schedule had been changed the week before but First Choice (Thomson flight) didn't bother to tell anyone.

Clearly not a one-off incident - appalling.

phritchie

I've also posted this in the Thomson 2 year limit thread.

To re-cap, my wife and I were delayed 4hrs 20mins flying from Birmingham to Cancun in Feb 2010. I started legal action in August 2013, Thomson's defence was 2 year limit and knock on delay due technical issues on another plane (they later dropped this after I sent them some probing questions).

We had our link call this morning with the District Judge and Tony Moran on behalf of Thomson, to follow up on the outcomes of the Dawson trial. Our case had been stayed in February. Inevitably the case was stayed again, pending the outcome of Dawson at the Supreme Court. The judge had obviously been keeping up to date with the situation, and talked us through what would happen next - nothing too unexpected.

Thomson confirmed they filled an application to appeal to the SC yesterday. The judge ordered them to inform the court of what happens to their appeal within 14 days of the outcome (permission to appeal denied, or the case is heard and won/lost).

For us, he advised we don't need to do anything for now. Once there is an outcome from the SC appeal, and if it goes our way, he advised to write direct to Thomson and invite them to settle out of court, rather than coming back for another hearing.

My wife asked about interest, the judge reconised that with base rates very low it was likely to be in teh 2-4% region we were awarded, rather than the full 8%. I'll ask Thomson for the full 8%, and accept a bit less, but if they aren't going to add interest it will need to go back to court. Similarly for the costs we've incured, I'll try to wring them for what we can - nothing more than we could get from the court process however.

So hang in there - as the judge said, it's all or nothing now depending on the SC appeal.

ashymcfc

ashymcfc wrote: »

hi, we were delayed from Gatwick 2 weeks ago for over 3hrs. iv filled in the relevant forms to send off but im after a bit of advice.

the flight was due to depart at 0640 and got a txt message at 0010 saying there will be a three hr delay. i later found out our original plane was sent to Nairobi after the bombings to bring the holidaymakers back. the plane we eventually flew on had just come back from the Caribbean, so we were not waiting for the original plane to come back to the Uk.

what do you think the delay would be classed as?

i got a letter back saying we were not entitled to compensation so i emailed the directors of tui who then said a specialist team will look into it.

received a letter back saying that our captain gave us wrong info when we boarded and that our original plane got a fault so they decided to put us on another plane which then they decided to send out to Kenya to pick passengers up, and because the fault was on the first aircraft we are not entitled to compensation.

surely it was still in their hands a to send the plane to Kenya and not done everything in their powers not to delay us?

a user on here has received compo from her flight from Manchester that also got delayed after sending the original aircraft to kenya, so do i know go to the CAA or straight to court?

cheers

David_e

ashymcfc wrote: »

so do i know go to the CAA or straight to court?

The latter.

111KAB

ashymcfc wrote: »

....so do i know go to the CAA or straight to court?

Bypass CAA as a total waste of space. Read thread and decide whether to go now or wait for Huzar. Then when you decide to take them to court final decision is to front yourself or use no win no fee.

Dusary

My story about a six hour flight delay:


June 18th, 2014

My Ref: TOM4180614
My Previous Refs: TOM3 220610, TOM180710, TOM2210710, TOM0600611,
TOM05032013
Your Ref: Summer10/4436323/MR


Dear Sirs,

In the light of the this month’s ruling by the Court of Appeal, I once more refer

My flight: TOM1354
Flight Date: 02/06/2010
Departure Airport: Glasgow (GLA)
Arrival Airport: Rhodes (RHO)


Which was delayed for 6 hours 10 minutes – according to the information your representative (Martin Richards) stated in his letter to me of 17th June 2010, confirmed by the FlightStats website.

However, I was dismayed by Thomson’s attitude to my initial and subsequent telephonic enquiries about my delayed flight when I telephoned on: 16/06/2010 and followed it up by a second phone call on 22/06/10, as well as by Thomson’s response to six or seven subsequent letters.

As Martin Richard’s letter stated, it was implied that I should contact my insurer. In my case my insurers were “Bank of Scotland” – who referred me to the EU regulations.

APPENDIX A - Regulation (EC) 261/2004)

I was further dismayed to be informed by telephone on 22/06/10 by Martin Richards, and subsequently by his Team Leader,
1) That these regulations did not refer to chartered flights; (in direct contravention of EU legislation – subsequently upheld)
2) That there was a ‘technical’ problem that was not covered by Regulation (EC) 261/2004
3) I quote http://ec.europa.eu/unitedkingdom/press/frontpage/23122008_en.htm
4) I quote again from EU regulations:

“For a delay of over 2 hours you must be given a printed form showing your rights and the appropriate body to whom you can complain.
Meals and refreshments in a reasonable relation to the waiting time.
Hotel accommodation in cases where the flight is cancelled or delayed overnight.
But more importantly, 250€ for a short haul flight and 400€ for a flight over 1500kms.”

I was not given a printed form showing my rights and informing me of the appropriate body to whom I could complain.

Nor was I offered €400 for a delayed flight over 1500kms.

i) May I ask why I was not given a printed form?
ii) Why I was not informed of my rights?
iii) Why I was not immediately given 400€ by way of compensation?
iv) Why I was told I should contact the provider of my travel insurance – when your company was well aware of EU regulations?
v) Why I have not immediately been offered compensation for having to:
a) Telephone you twice?
b) Telephone my Insurer?
c) Roam the internet to discover my ‘rights’ when it was your obligation under EU regulations and EU law to inform me?

Having telephoned Martin’s Team Leader in June 201 3, and being told ‘it was up to me to pursue this matter under The Small Claims Court’, may I respectfully remind you that under EU regulations, it is yourselves who should be processing this matter on my behalf, and on behalf of all the other passengers with whom I am in contact.

I also believe that I am entitled to further compensation in terms of the Montreal Convention.

I await your considered response within 14 days.

Yours faithfully,

I received a reply dated 30th June 2014

Thank you for your further correspondence regarding your flight delay. I am sorry that you remain unhappy with our previous response.

I understand the difficulties that were caused because of this delay. You have asked why you were not informed about EU regulations. We take the view that it is down to the passengers (sic) find out about EU regulations. it is not for us to inform passengers proactively.


nb. The writer ignores the EU regulation “For a delay of over 2 hours you must be given a printed form showing your rights and the appropriate body to whom you can complain.
Meals and refreshments in a reasonable relation to the waiting time.

With regards to the delay itself, having looked into daily flight logs, I can see your flight was delayed due to a defect with "Engine Bleed Valve" fault. Please rest assured this defected was not resulted by any poor maintenance or any kind of negligence on our behalf and could not have been prevented or foreseen. Therefore the root cause sits within extra ordinary (sic) circumstances.

We can assure you that the maintenance of our aircraft it taken extremely seriously. As well as complying with stringent requirement (sic) imposed on all airlines by various pieces of legislation, we undertake a process of monitoring all faults on our aircraft so that, if necessary, we can adapt our maintenance process accordingly.

Along with our routine maintenance procedures, an aircraft will undergo a number of pre-flight safety checks. Only when both the engineers and the pilot are satisfied the aircraft is fit for service will the aircraft be able to depart.

So as to help both customers and airlines, the European Commission has recently published draft guidelines as to what amounts to extraordinary circumstances. This list was prepared with the assistance of the various national bodies responsible for regulating the aviation industry across Europe.

In this draft, the Commission has intimated that the following would be considered extraordinary circumstances:

"Failure of necessary or required aircraft systems
(for example the cooling system, avionics system,
flight control system, flaps, slats, rudders, thrust reverser,
landing gear) either immediately prior to departure or
in-flight (where those systems had been maintained in
accordance with the required maintenance programme)."

While we are of course sorry to hear of any disruption cased by this delay, we do feel that as the aircraft was well maintained and that no problems were found during the pre-flight check, this incident was not something that we could have foreseen or prevented.

We do hope that we have addressed any questions you may have had in respect of the circumstances around the delay to your flight. If you are not satisfied with our response, you are of course able to raise this matter with the Civil Aviation Authority. They will perform a view of the circumstances and decide whether or not the delay to your flight was down to extraordinary circumstances.* This is a free service they offer to all passengers.

Thank you once again for getting in touch.

Yours sincerely,

Fatah Ali
Customer Support Advisor
After Travel Customer Support.

* What Mr Ali does NOT say is that even were the CAA to "perform of view" which fell in my favour, the CAA cannot force the airline to pay compensation.

One food voucher which didn't even buy a plate of fish and chips after a delay of just over six hours!

And no announcements made to passengers nor extra staff drafted in.

I am in Scotland.

We can only go back 5 years in claiming in the Small Claims Court.

111KAB

Dusary wrote: »

I am in Scotland.

We can only go back 5 years in claiming in the Small Claims Court.

Think you may find that as Thomson are UK based you can issue a claim in an English Court.